An inuksuk is a stone landmark that different peoples of the Arctic region build to leave a symbolic message. Inuksuit (the plural of inuksuk) can point the way, express joy, or simply say: welcome. A central image in Inuit culture, the inuksuk frames this picture book as an acrostic: readers will learn seven words from the Inuktitut language whose first letters together spell INUKSUK. Each word is presented in English and in Inuktitut characters, with phonetic pronunciation guides provided.
In a Guatemalan village, students squished into their tiny schoolhouse, two grades to a classroom. The villagers had tried expanding the school, but the money ran out before the project was finished. No money meant no wall materials, and that meant no more room for the students. Until they got a wonderful, crazy idea: Why not use soda bottles, which were scattered all around, to form the cores of the walls? Sometimes thinking outside the box or inside the bottle leads to the perfect solution.
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Deep in her den under a snowflake blanket, Mama snuggles her newborn babies. When spring arrives, the bears awaken and emerge from their lair, and as the weather warms to summer, Mama teaches her young ones to fish, gather berries, and dig for roots. Then, in fall, the leaves turn gold, food grows scarce, and the family prepares for hibernation and the coming winter.
Friends Bear and Hare go out and play in the snow. Hare loves catching snow on his tongue, making snow angels, and building a snow hare, but Bear isn’t having as much fun. What will make Bear enjoy this winter wonderland?
When John notices a manhole cover with the words ACE DRAGON LTD. written across it, he can’t help but investigate what lies beneath. And so begins an unusual friendship between a boy and a dragon named Ace, who wears two pairs of Wellington boots and loves skywriting with fire, flying stunts to the moon, and turning gold into straw.
When Anja discovers an abandoned reindeer baby in the woods, she cares for it and raises it as her own. They become dear friends and have many adventures together, but as the reindeer grows he wishes to rejoin his kind. So Anja leads him to join the greatest reindeer of all—those of Santa’s sled team.
Badger Girl is delighted to find the biggest turnip she has ever seen growing in her vegetable garden, but when the time comes to harvest the giant root, she is unable to pull it up without help from family and friends.
Every night at half past seven, Michael and his stuffed monkey go hippity-hop, hippity-hop, up the stairs to bed. But one night when Michael calls out for Monkey Moon, he’s not in any of his favorite places. Dad thinks he must still be at the park, so he and Michael bundle up and head outside, into the dark street, to retrace their steps.
Throughout the morning, his daydreams transform the world around him. Unfortunately, lots of other people—the bus driver, the crossing guard, and his teachers—all tell him to get his head out of the clouds. It is only in art class that he realizes he can bring the wonder out of his head for the whole world to enjoy.
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One morning, Pom Pom Panda wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and then nothing goes right. By the time he arrives at school, Pom Pom is in a terrible mood.